Related papers: Teaching relativity at the AstroCamp
We present an investigation of game-like simulations for physics teaching. We report on the effectiveness of the interactive simulation "Real Time Relativity" for learning special relativity. We argue that the simulation not only enhances…
The "1st Workshop of Astronomy and Astrophysics for Students" was organized with the purpose of bringing togheter scientific Institutions involved in Astrophysical researches, of the Campania region and beyond. In this context the…
Cosmology and GR remain largely inaccessible to high-school teaching due to the advanced prerequisites to master these topics. Integrating them into upper secondary teaching is a significant challenge that remains unresolved. This…
The study of the Universe and all its contents, the physical phenomena and the evolution of the sky objects has always attracted the Humanity. The Astronomy begins to try to explain these things, others sciences too. Therefore, we think a…
The Lecture-Tutorials for Introductory Astronomy have been designed to help introductory astronomy instructors actively engage their students in developing their conceptual understandings and reasoning abilities across a wide range of…
This book presents the proceedings of the IVth Azores International Advanced School in Space Sciences entitled "Asteroseismology and Exoplanets: Listening to the Stars and Searching for New Worlds", which took place in Horta, Azores…
Whoever has to learn or to teach thermodynamics is confronted with conceptual difficulties which are specific to this field of physics ([1],[2]). It seems that they can be eliminated by inserting relativity in the thermodynamic theory. The…
Many professional physicists do not fully understand the implications of the Einstein equivalence principle of general relativity. Consequently, many are unaware of the fact that special relativity is fully capable of handling accelerated…
Cultural Astronomy is interdisciplinary connecting the arts, humanities, social & physical sciences. Data collection methods and theories are used from many disciplines and meld with methods and theories within cultural astronomy. The…
This document gathers the notes of a 30-hour review course on gravitation, which I delivered in January 2018 and January 2019 at the African Institute for Mathematical Sciences of Cameroon (AIMS-Cameroon). Its main goal is to propose a big…
Since 1990, the United Nations in cooperation with the European Space Agency is holding annually a workshop on basic space science for the benefit of the worldwide development of astronomy. These workshops have been held in countries of…
This contribution shows that the main topics of Relativity can be discussed at an elementary level and in a considerable extent - including the formal results of "Time Dilation" and "Lorentz Contraction" - by a minor modification of the…
We report our experience in bringing science into US and French classrooms. We participated in the US scientific educational program Project ASTRO. It is based on a partnership between a school teacher and an astronomer. They together…
This work analyzes the difficulties in learning and teaching Einstein's theory of special relativity. An extensive bibliographic review has been performed, considering articles published in the most relevant journals on science education,…
These lectures notes contain an introduction to General Relativity. They are addressed to a general mathematical audience with no specific background in physics. The goal is to motivate and explain Einstein's theory of gravity and discuss…
An approach to special relativity is outlined which emphasizes the wave and field mechanisms which physically produce the relativistic effects, with the goal of making them seem more natural to students by connecting more explicitly with…
In the context of the European Erasmus+ project Teaching ASTronomy at the Educational level (TASTE), we investigated the extent to which a learning module at school and a set of activities during a planetarium visit help students to gain…
Recent studies have shown that not only primary school students but also their future teachers reach science courses with pre-constructed and consistent models of the world surrounding them. These ideas include many misconceptions which…
University courses in conceptual physics and astronomy typically serve as the terminal science experience for non-science majors. Significant work has gone into developing research-verified pedagogical methods for the algebra- and…
This is a report of a course on modern physics designed and taught to undergraduate science and engineering students in the Spring of 2013. The course, meant for freshmen, attempts to integrate statistical mechanics into non-classical…